


A Little Young for Old Time’s Sake

by ungoodpirate



Series: Putting The Puzzle Back Together [6]
Category: Glee
Genre: Hiatus fic, Klaine, M/M, Post-The Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-31
Updated: 2012-10-31
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I hear you keep turning down all the girls who want to dance with you.”</p><p>Blaine said to him, quite seriously, “I can’t dance with the one person here I really want to dance with.”<br/>…<br/>Kurt and Blaine share a conversation and a dance at Emma and Will’s wedding. A decision is made in regards to their relationship. Kurt does nothing out of pity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Young for Old Time’s Sake

**Author's Note:**

> You should be able to read this without reading the rest of the series, but the rest of the series adds a lot to the backdrop of this and will make some of the random other details make sense.

February brought with it, finally, Will and Emma’s wedding. As promised, all the current and former New Directions members were invited and all of them managed to make the trip. The ceremony was fairly traditional and in a big, open-aired church. The reception was in a hall several miles away. Everything was decorated as Kurt thought a wedding planned by and for the pastel-wearing, flowery Emma Pillsbury would be. Simple, sweet, and romantic. Not the wedding he’d plan for himself, but, of course, the wedding he had planned had lost the groom recently. 

At the reception, he wandered the tables to find his place setting. “Kurt Hummel” was typed in flow-y script on a small placard on a white plate at a table, he had spied as he rounded it, inhabited by other glee club members and former glee club members. He began to pull out his chair when Blaine, dressed in a slim cut suit accompanied by a viciously purple bowtie, stood next to him. 

“I don’t think they got the memo,” Blaine said. A quick glance at the placard on the place setting adjacent Kurt revealed that Blaine had been assigned to sit next to him.

Kurt bit his lip, then said. “I think we’re mature enough to sit next to each other without breaking into tears, screams, or song.” He wasn’t sure the same thing could be said for Finn and Rachel, but Mr. Schue seemed to have been aware of the change in that couple’s status, so they were seated with several people between them. “Of course, only if you want to,” Kurt added, for it was no longer a one-sided thing, their break up and who fit into guilty roles. “I’m sure you can find someone to switch seats with you.”

“No, I’m fine here if you are,” Blaine said. It didn’t sound like a challenge like someone else, someone lesser, might’ve made it.

They took their seats. Kurt pre-occupied himself with talking to Tina and Mercedes who were sat on the other side of him. Blaine talked to his other seat partners, Sam and Mike, rather than Kurt. Though it seemed whoever had concocted this seating arrangement had been hoping for drama, putting three no-longer-couples this close together. Then again, Mr. Schue hadn’t requested any of them sing at his wedding – which was actually nice, not having to be the entertainment at an event you were supposed to be attending – so maybe this was a try to get some impromptu, heartfelt performances out of them. 

Dinner was promptly served and they preoccupied themselves with eating. Occasionally Blaine and Kurt would knock elbows or knees and glance apologetically at each other. It came to mostly a humorous point, with a fifth or sixth of such a happening, Kurt giving Blaine a “whatever” eye roll. Blaine grinned back, bemused. 

Shortly later, Will got up from his seat to serenade Emma, which was followed by their first dance. With that, the dance floor was opened to the guests. Mercedes pulled Kurt from his chair to accompany her on the dance floor. 

“We danced at the last wedding we were at together,” she said. 

“Well, I also danced with Finn, so…” he said, but he put a hand on her waist and glided her around the dance floor. “When did you learn to ballroom dance so well?” he asked her. She could dance, but this had never been her forte in dancing.

“There’s this guy in LA whose been teaching me,” she said. It was obvious it was more than just a “guy in LA”, so they indulged in a swirl of tell-all. 

“And what about you?” Mercedes asked about four songs later. “Last time I saw you, you were all upset about Blaine. Now you two seem almost… chummy.”

“We’re just mature enough to be civil in public,” Kurt quickly excused, although knowing it was something of a lie. It’s not like he felt more on an even playing field with Blaine ever since Christmas or anything. Or perhaps he totally was. But it’s not like it was something that could be explained in a conversation taking place in the midst of a dance floor. 

“There’s civil, honey, and then there’s flirty.” 

Kurt scoffed, but it came out less offended and skeptical and more flustered and guilty. “We weren’t flirting.”

Mercedes gave him an attitude-ridden look. “Then what exactly do you call glancing at each other covertly like you really want to look, but don’t think you’re allowed to.”

Before they could discuss more, Sam and Rachel appeared to cut in. Kurt was snatched away from Rachel by Brittany a few dances later, then Tina.

“I must be a really popular dance partner,” Kurt commented to her. 

“Well, you’re the only guy other than Mike whose really comfortable partner dancing without choreography. And Blaine, but he keeps turning everyone down.”

He turned Tina so that he could see their table, and indeed Blaine was sitting there on his lonesome, watching the dance floor, but not him. Kurt followed the boy’s gaze to find it on Rachel and Finn, snuggled up to each other swaying, a little off the beat, together. Considering that Kurt was both a confidant of Rachel and Finn, he wasn’t looking forward to the melodrama that would spawn. 

Kurt excused himself at the end of the next song with a tale of tiredness. Tina gave him a knowing look. His former female classmates knew him too well.

He got a drink from the bar and made his way back to his seat. Blaine watched him as he sat down, right back next to him. 

“I hear you keep turning down all the girls who want to dance with you.”

Blaine said to him, quite seriously, “I can’t dance with the one person here I really want to dance with.”

Suddenly, Kurt felt like he was back in his junior year of high school and Blaine was everything. Everything, such a vague term, but so accurate. Blaine was hope, courage, and a crisp private school uniform. He was the twist of Kurt’s heart and the text messages he read over and over again until well past memorized. Blaine, the boy where the crush had actually turned into love, and although he clearly remembered the moment they shared that aloud, Blaine watching him with these eyes, completely enamored, and Kurt swallowing down scalding coffee so he could repeat it back, he wasn’t sure when the turn between the two, crush and love, was. 

And, oh, how Kurt would’ve loved, in those long days when Blaine was oblivious to Kurt’s terribly huge affection for him, to hear words like these. 

Kurt cleared his throat, and said, “And how are you? How’ve you been?”

“Do you want the real answer or the small-talk answer?” Blaine said.

“The real answer.” It wasn’t even a contemplation. Kurt wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t want anything less than real.

“I’ve been seeing a therapist,” Blaine said plainly. No guilt, no embarrassment, but Kurt was made uneasy by it. It was a straight forward thing to say that most wouldn’t, but Kurt did ask for reality. 

“I’ve had a lot things I needed to resolve that I haven’t… since coming out, since the Sadie Hawkins dance.” Blaine lowered his voice there, but Kurt was sure he was the only person in the entire crowd of the wedding who knew what those three words implied. “I was able to live with it because I had other things. I had the Warblers, then I had you. But now…”

“But now you have New Directions,” Kurt said, his voice higher pitched than normal.

Blaine shrugged a single shoulder, but even that weak gesture of a response was performed half-heartedly. “It’s not the same,” he muttered, then a little stronger. “The people I really became friends with last year, like Rachel and Mike, well, they left too.”

“Oh, Blaine,” Kurt said, and it ached for him, those two words. 

“I don’t mean to make excuses,” Blaine said, and he was staring at his hands in his lap rather than at Kurt. “And I don’t mean to blame you, but I told you last school year, more than once, how worried about us, being apart, about me being alone without you... I just felt so alone.”

The implications were there without them needing to be spelled out. Blaine didn’t cheat because he wanted sex. 

“But you’re the one who sent me to New York,” Kurt said, and it wasn’t an interrogation for Blaine. Kurt was just having a hard time equating the Blaine who had loving sent him on his way and the Blaine who was so desperate for Kurt not to leave, that it destroyed him when he did.

Blaine looked up at him, and his eyebrows were dipped in that way he had when he was being serious and talking about something he meant completely and whole-heartedly. Blaine, as a person, was earnest if nothing else. He wasn’t a type for deception. His only deception really, ever, was of himself, to make himself believe he was more confident than he was internally. 

“It’s where you belonged, Kurt,” Blaine said, and his voice was cut with that scratchiness that sounded like pain. “You were wilting in Lima. You always were. But in New York, you could finally grow. You’ve already grown so much.”

Blaine lifted a hand as if to touch the curve of Kurt’s cheek, but he dropped it before it even got close. 

Blaine had put him, Kurt, first, like he always had. Like how he had let Kurt return to McKinley with a song. Like he had followed him to McKinley the dawn of the next school year just the same way. He had sent Kurt to New York knowing how much it would hurt him. Suddenly Kurt could see it all, him dismissing Blaine’s phone calls and talking over him on their Skype dates. How it was easy to assuage the hurt of missing Blaine when he had the whole of New York opening up to him, living in the city of his dreams, while Blaine was left in Lima with few, barely-his friends; distant parents; and Kurt not exactly understanding how much he meant when he said he was “missing” him.

It didn’t excuse what Blaine did, cheating, or the hurt Kurt had suffered because of it. However, Kurt understood a little more now. That moment Blaine had said “I was with someone” it felt like a punch, knocking the air from his lungs, forbidding him from drawing breathe. Not just because of the betrayal, but because he honestly never expected it of Blaine. 

He must’ve built Blaine up too much in his head though, forgetting he was just as flawed and just as plagued by self-esteem issues as Kurt was. He could see it now, Blaine sunken in, once again. He didn’t like seeing Blaine like this, broken, as he had these several times he had been back in Lima. 

Kurt wondered if he could ever do for Blaine what Blaine had done for him. Put Blaine first. 

…

Kurt stood and Blaine was sure that he would be walking away, not wanting to deal with him and his drama. He should’ve kept his stupid mouth shut, instead of releasing the visceral guts of his emotions out. His therapist said it would be good for him, though, to start vocalizing his problems, instead of just acting, and often with bad decisions, to deal with them.

But then Kurt’s hand was stuck down into his line of vision. He traced his eyes up the arm to Kurt’s face. He looked a little sad; it was always easy to tell when Kurt was sad, as long as you were looking. 

“Dance with me,” Kurt said. “For old time’s sake.”

Blaine pinched himself covertly on the side of his thigh and when he didn’t wake up, he put his hand in Kurt’s offered one and let him his lead him to the dance floor. A slow song started and Blaine was thankful to whatever god, fate, or chance caused that. 

That got into the dancing pose easily, two hands held tight together, one of Kurt’s on his shoulder. They didn’t do any fancy steps, but just swayed. Blaine other hand was gripped tight at Kurt’s waist and he half-expected Kurt to yell at him for wrinkles. 

Unintentionally or unconsciously, they moved closer together than they ever had when they danced in public before. Two school proms at a fairly homophobic school had never been a comfortable place to be overly affectionate. Just going to prom together, just existing as an out couple had been their own victories. 

Now they were torso against torso, Blaine’s head next to Kurt’s, not touching, not cheek-to-cheek, which would be more than he dared to want. He could feel Kurt’s heartbeat, or maybe it was just his own, but harder. His eyes were squeezed shut. He didn’t know when that happened, but he wasn’t aiming to open them, not when he wanted to concentrate on just feeling Kurt, and feeling not alone. He needed to absorb it all, this sense of completion, so for the many days that followed where he felt scooped out, he could imagine this, and pretend to be a little more solid.

What Blaine couldn’t know was what Kurt was thinking, that this wasn’t just a pity dance. That he liked this feeling too. 

“Maybe,” Kurt whispered into his ear as the song died and they stilled, “We could be friends again?”

Blaine nodded, eyes still closed, because if this was a dream, he didn’t want to wake up.


End file.
